Last year (May 2019) My wife and I received the wonderful news that she was pregnant after losing several babies over the past couple of years. This was after a surgery and lots of help from our doctor to get us to the point of conceiving. Prayers and the help of an awesome doctor we made it through to the first trimester (a first for us) I also started having problems eating. My wife and I figured it was sympathy signs for a while. A visit to my doctor proceeded with putting me on acid reducer until it got much worse over the following three weeks. After some more tests and an EGD with a biopsy, I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer (adenocarcinoma). The tumor was located at my GE junction and it was preventing food for entering my stomach. The initial staging was 2b but more tests needed to done to determine the treatment.
September brought surgery to do a saline wash of my stomach and another biopsy of the saline. This test was to determine if the initial staging would be upgraded to stage 4. The tests came back negative and they changed the plan to treat with intent to cure. Treatment was laid out to be 26 days of targeted radiation (5 days a week), 8 weeks of chemo (1 day a week). After radiation and chemo, a surgury (look for an upcoming post about my surgery) would be performed to remove the affected area.
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